The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think

by Jennifer Ackerman

It flits from perch to perch, emitting its persistent call. The hunter follows. This pattern of leading and following is repeated until the bird reaches the treasure: a nest of bees ensconced high in a broad-leaved tree or tucked into a rock crevice or termite mound. Once close to the nest, the honeyguide perches nearby and lets out an “indication call,” softer in tone, with longer pauses between notes. Not just any human call will elicit this behavior. Among the Yao, it’s that trill-grunt call, brrrrr-hm! For Hadza-speaking people in Tanzania, it’s a melodious whistle. In recent experiments, evolutionary biologist Claire Spottiswoode and her colleagues played the trill-grunt call of the Yao honey-hunter, an unrelated Yao call, or the song of a ring-necked dove and then tracked the birds’ responses. In two-thirds of the trials with the trill-grunt calls, the birds responded by guiding the honey-hunters, leading them straight to a bee nest in more than 80 percent of the forays.